Fragments of Home: Reimagining Pruitt-Igoe through Rural Futures and Urban Memory

3 units

Fragments of Home investigates the afterlife of Pruitt-Igoe through a speculative and reparative lens. Through the investigation of migration, belonging, and spatial continuity between rural and urban Black geographies, the course examines the architectural elements that once composed daily life within the complex - the stair, the elevator, the yard, the corridor, the gallery, the threshold, the facade, the roof, the party wall, the urban edge, and systems of connection - as fragments that carry both memory and possibility. Rather than reading Pruitt-Igoe solely as a symbol of urban failure, students will reinterpret its material and spatial remains through the intertwined frameworks of rural futures and urban memory. How might the yard evolve into a field of ecological restoration? What forms of dwelling emerge when the domestic is rooted in memory, repair, and return? How might sites of spatial and fragmented trauma reengage with the urban fabric? Through drawing, collage, and model-making, students will construct a reimagining of these fragments as architectural propositions that bridge rural and urban geographies. The course draws on oral histories, archives, migration/diaspora mapping, and fieldwork in St. Louis to foreground the lived experience of Pruitt-Igoe's residents while connecting their spatial legacies to broader narratives of Black homemaking, displacement, and resilience. The semester culminates in an exhibition, Fragments of Home, presenting reimagined artifacts that transform the Pruitt-Igoe legacy into a site of creative and cultural possibility.